Published: May 20, 2026
New Lone Star coach signs three-year deal with mandate to end Liberia’s long absence from continental football’s biggest stage
MONROVIA — Mohammed Adil Erradi, unveiled Monday as Liberia’s new Lone Star head coach, says the country’s football identity is built on a foundation that few nations can claim, a Ballon d’Or winner, and that restoring Liberia to the Africa Cup of Nations in 2027 is both a realistic ambition and a professional obligation he is prepared to meet.
“Liberia has a big history in world football because the best player to represent the country won the Ballon d’Or, which is very difficult to achieve,” the Belgian-Moroccan tactician said at his unveiling, invoking the legacy of George Weah, who remains the only African player to have won the award and whose global stardom gave Liberia a football stature that has outlasted his playing career by decades.
Erradi, who signed a three-year contract with the Liberia Football Association, arrives with an impressive club record. At Rwanda’s APR FC, he won three league titles and guided the club through a remarkable 50-match unbeaten streak, one of the more striking sustained runs of form in recent Central African club football. His appointment as Lone Star head coach is his first role leading a national team, following his departure from Moroccan club KACM Marrakech.
He said he has spent the past three months studying Liberian players and analyzing their style of play in preparation for the role, and that his approach will draw on both the local and diaspora talent pool. “My mission is to build a competitive side that can win home and away matches and become very difficult to defeat,” Erradi said, adding that recruiting home-based and foreign-based Liberian players will be central to his plans.
He stressed that qualification will not be achieved by technical staff alone and called for a unified effort across the entire football ecosystem. Success, he said, will depend on genuine collaboration among players, supporters and all football stakeholders in the country.
The task facing Erradi is a demanding one. Liberia has been drawn in Group K of the 2027 AFCON qualifiers alongside Mali, Cape Verde and Rwanda, a group that offers no easy passage. The qualifying campaign begins in September 2026, with the top finishers advancing to the tournament. Rwanda, notably, is a country Erradi knows intimately from his time with APR FC, a familiarity that could prove tactically useful when the two sides meet.
Youth and Sports Minister Cornelia Kruah used the occasion to reaffirm the government’s commitment to the qualification campaign, describing the Lone Star as a symbol of national unity, particularly for Liberian youth, and pledging full institutional support for the new technical staff.
To back that commitment with resources, the Liberian government and the LFA have established the Lone Star Mobilization Committee, headed by Rev. Luther Tarpeh, with a fundraising target of $5 million to finance the team’s preparations and qualifying campaign. The committee is actively calling on government agencies, corporate institutions and private citizens to contribute toward the initiative, framing the push for AFCON qualification as a national project rather than a football association undertaking alone.
Liberia’s last appearance at the Africa Cup of Nations remains a distant memory for a football public that has watched neighboring countries build sustained continental competitiveness. Whether Erradi’s blend of tactical preparation, regional experience and respect for the country’s football heritage is enough to end that absence will become clearer when the qualifiers kick off in September.
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